The last 'trial of the century’ was a media circus in LA in 1995. But the
Pretoria courtroom one has a big difference - there's no celebrity-struck
jury to sway

Both men were star athletes; both were accused of killing a beautiful blonde in a fit of rage. And both became defendants in what the media dubbed “the trial of the century”. The comparisons between O J Simpson and Oscar Pistorius are obvious and inevitable.

The televised evidence in Oscar Pistorius’s case is being debated, analysed and discussed in much the same way the testimony of witnesses in the O J Simpson trial riveted American viewers 19 years ago. Was Pistorius’s histrionic sobbing, crying and retching, that has gripped viewers around the world, a genuine display of grief? Or was it a calculated ploy to win sympathy and demonstrate how distraught he is at having shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp because, as he claims, he mistook her for a burglar?

This week’s proceedings in South Africa, which were adjourned yesterday, have seen Pistorius contemplating personal oblivion. “My life is on the line,” the athlete sobbed from the witness box. “Well, Reeva doesn’t have a life any more because of what you did,” the exasperated prosecutor snapped back. The Blade Runner’s downfall appears all but complete. Just as much a celebrity in South Africa as O J Simpson was in the US, Pistorius moved in high society circles in the city in which he lived. Born without the fibula bone in both legs, he became a superstar and an inspiration to many as the first male athlete with a disability to compete in the Olympic Games. While Pistorius was a double amputee, Simpson had contracted rickets at the age of two, leaving him pigeon-toed and his legs skinny and bow-legged. Both had triumphed over adversity to achieve sporting fame and fortune, but they also had a darker side that the public never saw.

Simpson had previously assaulted not only his ex-wife but a girlfriend, too, while we have heard evidence of previous incidents of domestic violence at Pistorius’s home, as well as a prior incident with a gun. Pistorius is a man who sought comfort from guns. One of his girlfriends testified that she had been with him when he fired a gun through the roof of his car because he was angry with the police; he had wanted to shoot out the traffic lights.

The drama of the Pretoria courtroom, at times lit like a film set, is more sombre in tone than the LA circus that accompanied the O J trial. Held amid hyperbole, verging at times on hysteria, in a city where the sheer star power of its Hollywood celebrity culture draws people from all over the world, the O J Simpson trial was, in the pre-internet age, the most publicised trial in American history.

At the time of his arrest in June 1994 Simpson, then 47 and nicknamed The Juice, had been a star running back both at the University of Southern California and for the Buffalo Bills and was a hero to many. After retiring he had forged a successful acting career, having appeared in the Naked Gun films; he was a TV football analyst; had a lucrative sideline appearing in commercials for Hertz; played golf regularly at the exclusive Riviera Country Club and moved in the upper echelons of Los Angeles’s celebrity society.

Even his arrest was watched by millions on television who were captivated by the slow-moving police chase in which Simpson, in a white Ford Bronco, headed towards the Mexican border. As the car turned and he headed back home where he was arrested, the episode unfolded on every network with newscasters and psychologists offering a running commentary and hundreds of fans lining bridges over the freeway, cheering him on, shouting: “The Juice is loose! Go, go, go!’’

Consequently the trial was conducted in an atmosphere resembling a Hollywood premiere. A media village for cameramen and TV crews was set up outside the downtown criminal courts building and crowds lined the street to cheer the arriving lawyers, who became celebrities in their own right. T-shirt vendors, placard-waving demonstrators and itinerant preachers all added to the circus.

Lawyers, of course, are an integral part of both cases, although their profile in Los Angeles was somewhat higher. During the 18 months I spent covering first the murders of O J Simpson’s wife Nicole and her lover Ronald Goldman, and then the eight-month trial of O J, I, and many others, came to know as much about the lawyers as the defendant.

Simpson had assembled a formidable team of high-profile lawyers which cost him an estimated £5 million and was inevitably dubbed the “Dream Team”. They included F Lee Bailey, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz, Robert Kardashian (the father of the now-famous-for-being-famous Kardashian sisters) and the boisterous Johnnie Cochran, who was undisputedly the star and enjoyed nothing better than playing to the jury. It was Cochran who famously persuaded the prosecution to allow Simpson to try on a bloodied glove allegedly found behind his house, telling the jury: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” The prosecution’s case rested on the shoulders of the beleaguered Marcia Clark, who became a tabloid obsession as the National Enquirer published topless photos of her taken on a beach and the country obsessed over her hair, fashion style and make-up.

It was a case in which lawyers privately believed the evidence would matter far less than whether the jury would be able to deal objectively with a celebrity defendant of Simpson’s status. It turned out they couldn’t. His acquittal, on October 3, 1995, saw 150 million people tuning in for the verdict, making it one of the most watched events in television history. There will be no celebrity factor for Pistorius to cling to – with no jury system in South Africa, his fate lies in the hands of a single judge.

The lawyers in the Pistorius case have so far attained neither the fame nor notoriety of their O J counterparts, although prosecutor Gerrie Nel has hammered away, bulldog-fashion, picking holes in Pistorius’s testimony and casting doubt on his assertion he believed a burglar was in the house. He has portrayed Pistorius as an arrogant hothead who is reckless with firearms and refuses to take responsibility for his actions. “You’ll blame anybody but yourself,” he told the 27-year-old, questioning him about an incident in which the track star was accused of firing a pistol in a crowded restaurant. Pistorius’s defence lawyer, Barry Roux, is an energetic rottweiler prone to bullying prosecution witnesses. He reduced one to tears and another hyperventilated as soon as she came into court. In a Johnnie Cochran-style moment, he put a state forensic witness through a gruelling workout, telling him to swing a cricket bat again and again, on his knees, standing up and bending.

As in the Simpson cases, the reliability of police evidence and behaviour of officers at the Johannesburg crime scene has been called into question. Mr Roux, in torrid cross-examinations, elicited that performance-enhancing drugs supposedly discovered in the athlete’s bedroom turned out to be herbal remedies; witnesses who claimed to have heard an argument between Pistorius and Miss Steenkamp, along with screams and shots, were living more than half a kilometre away; a spent bullet casing was missed by the police; and a police officer later taken off the case had walked through the crime scene without wearing the right protective clothing.

It all has echoes of the Simpson case when LA detective Mark Fuhrman was accused by Johnnie Cochran of planting the bloodied glove at Simpson’s house. Cochran didn’t mince words, calling the officer “a genocidal racist, a perjurer, America’s worst nightmare and the personification of evil”. Fuhrman later pleaded no contest to felony charges of perjury arising from his testimony and was put on probation. But in true Hollywood fashion he went on to become something of a celebrity, writing several books and becoming a guest commentator for Fox News.

The biggest missing element in the Pistorius case so far is a verdict. And with it resting in the hands of a judge rather than a clearly biased, celebrity-struck jury, it could turn out to be the biggest difference between the two “trials of the century”.